Waiting list automation
Give an opening in your diary a next step.
Offer suitable openings to the patients waiting for them. Connect patient preferences, automatic slot offers and confirmed bookings in your aesthetic clinic's appointment workflow.
An opening in the diary. A patient who wanted it.
A cancellation starts another round of work for reception. Bring the waiting list, available time and patient response together, so your team can follow what happens without keeping a separate callback spreadsheet.
Start with their preferences.
Keep the treatment, location, dates and preferred practitioner together.
Give an opening a next step.
Offer eligible freed appointment times to matching patients.
Let the patient respond.
An SMS links to the offered time, with a clear accept or decline choice.
Keep your team in control.
Choose how offers go out and manage individual offers from the waiting list.
See which offers become bookings.
Review filled slots, patient responses and time to fill in one report.
Remember what works for each patient.
Keep new appointment requests and patients seeking an earlier time on the same waiting list. Record their preferred dates, treatment, location and practitioners, with notes your team can refer to.
- New or earlier appointment
Link an entry to an existing booking when the patient wants to move it earlier.
- A choice during online booking
Enable the option for patients to join the waiting list for an earlier appointment as they book.
- A practical record for reception
Search the list and keep patient preferences alongside the next available time.
Match the opening to the appointment it needs to hold.
When an appointment is cancelled or moved, automatic offers look for matching waiting-list entries. Location, date range, treatment length and practitioner preferences help determine which patient can use the available time.
- Existing bookings only move earlier
A patient waiting for an earlier appointment is not offered a later one.
- Linked extras stay in the picture
For a linked booking with add-ons, the check also considers whether those add-ons can follow the move.
- Availability is checked again
The offered time is rechecked when the patient accepts. An offer is not a completed booking.
A clear offer. A simple patient decision.
The offer SMS opens a clinic-branded page showing the time, treatment, practitioner and location. Patients can accept or decline, with the response window and any shared-offer conditions visible before they choose.
- Make the change clear
The page explains whether accepting creates a booking or moves the patient's existing appointment.
- Confirm the result
A successful acceptance books the available time. If it has already gone, the patient sees that it is no longer available.
- Keep the clinic informed
Offer status and history remain visible to staff alongside the waiting-list entry.
Choose how your clinic offers its time.
Choose staggered or exclusive offers and set the minutes between invitations. Review the offer message before starting the automation, then keep staff-led actions available for the situations that need a person.
- Staggered offers
Invite matching patients in joining order, one window apart. Earlier offers stay open, up to three at a time, and the first successful acceptance takes the time. Offers close 15 minutes before the appointment starts.
- Exclusive offers
Offer one patient a window to respond before moving to the next candidate. If nobody else is waiting, their offer stays open until the cut-off.
- Staff-led follow-through
Offer a particular available time, resend an open offer, withdraw it or stop offers for that time.
- Review, then start
The default SMS automation starts paused. Automatic offers need the clinic's setting enabled and a running offer automation with messaging access.
See what happened after the offer.
The Waiting List Offers report brings offered slots, filled slots, acceptance and response time together. Review outcomes by location and month, then inspect the records behind the result.
- Filled slots
Fill rate compares offered slots that became bookings with all slots offered to the waiting list. It does not measure every cancellation in the diary.
- Patient responses
Acceptance rate compares offers that produced a booking with offers sent. Declined, expired and closed offers remain distinct.
- Time to fill
See the time from the first offer for a slot to the accepted response. Reporting updates periodically rather than on every live screen change.
Trust and compliance
Your clinic controls the offer.
Keep booking decisions clear, patient choices explicit and your team's actions traceable.
Feature availability depends on your plan, enabled features and access permissions.
- Encrypted storage
- Clinic-controlled setup
- Choose the offer mode, minutes between invitations and message. The default automation waits for your review before you start it.
- Patient choice
- The patient sees the appointment and conditions before accepting or declining. A message alone does not change their booking.
- Availability checks
- The booking path rechecks the time and refuses a clash if another appointment has taken it.
- Visible staff actions
- Offer history distinguishes automatic and staff-sent offers, including offers withdrawn by staff.
FAQs
Can we offer cancelled appointments without calling every patient?
Yes. With automatic offers enabled and the offer-message automation running, DappleOS can offer eligible freed times to matching waiting-list patients. Patients receive a link to review and respond, while your team can follow the offer status. A suitable match and patient acceptance are still needed to fill the time.
Can patients ask for an earlier appointment when booking online?
Yes. Your clinic can enable the earlier-appointment waiting-list option in online booking. Staff can also manage entries, including requests linked to an existing appointment and requests for a new booking.
How does DappleOS decide who receives an offer?
The process checks active entries against location, date range, treatment length and preferred practitioners, working through matching entries in joining order. Your offer mode determines when the next patient is invited. These are booking checks, not an assessment of clinical suitability.
What happens if two patients want the same time?
Staggered offers can be open to more than one patient, and the offer page explains that the time may be shared. The first successful acceptance books the available time. The booking path checks availability again and closes other offers once the slot is taken.
Will accepting move the patient's existing appointment?
When the waiting-list entry is linked to an existing appointment, the offer page explains that accepting will move it to the earlier time. If the booking has linked add-ons, their ability to follow the move is also checked. An unlinked entry creates a new appointment after successful acceptance.
Can our team still manage an offer personally?
Yes. Authorised staff can offer a specific available time, resend an open offer, withdraw an offer or stop offers for that time. Staff can also use the available Book or Move here actions when arranging the appointment themselves.
What do we need to set up, and how do we measure it?
Choose the waiting-list settings and offer mode, review the SMS, and start the offer automation with the required messaging access. The Waiting List Offers report shows offered and filled slots, acceptance and time to fill. A demo can walk through the setup and report using your clinic's workflow.
Ask DappleOS
Ask how waiting-list offers could work with your clinic's appointment book and patient messages.